Remittances Reach $19.4B In Nov.

11-Month Total

Manila Bulletin - Overseas Filipinos’ cash remittances sent through the formal banking channels grew six percent year-on-year to $19.42 billion as of the end of November and exceeding the five percent forecast for 2012, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported yesterday.

As for personal remittances which include funds transferred through informal means such as the “padala” system, the BSP said this amounted to $21.59 billion, up 6.1 percent compared to what was reported same time in 2011.

The BSP tallies remittances as cash or transfers via the banking networks and as personal remittances. The projection for 2012 is that remittances will reach $21.1 billion or five percent higher than 2011’s $20.1 billion.

For the month of November alone, cash remittances rose 7.6 percent to $1.9 billion while personal remittances also increased by 7.6 percent to $2.1 billion.

In a statement, the BSP said the growth in personal remittances was helped along by the 12.7 percent increase in transfers from sea-based workers and land-based overseas Filipino workers with short-term contracts, as well as the 13.4 percent increase in remittances from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more.

As for the expansion in cash remittances, BSP stated that remittances “sustained an uptrend” as cash transfers from both land-based and sea-based workers increased by 4.2 percent and 12.5 percent, respectively.

Bulk of cash remittances or about 78 percent are sourced from the US, Canada, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Japan, United Arab Emirates, and Singapore.

According to the BSP, “remittances continued to draw strength from the increasing demand for skilled and professional Filipinos abroad along with innovations in remittance services offered by banks and financial institutions.”

Based on data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, for 2012 there are 782,201 job orders that has been approved. About 42.2 percent or 329,947 are already processed job orders for service, production and related workers, as well as for professional, technical and related workers.

The demand came from mostly Middle East nations such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar. More job orders from Taiwan and Hong Kong were also processed last year.

The BSP also reported that government efforts to deploy more workers overseas have been improving during the past year.

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